Mobile network service providers today offer a wide range of Mobile Location-Based Services (“MLBS”) in the market place that enable a user of a first mobile device to locate a user of a second mobile device, based on the location of the second mobile device. Such MLBS may include, for example, Chaperone offered by Verizon Wireless®, Axcess Family Finder offered by Alltel Wireless®, and Boost Loop offered by BoostMobile™. Chaperon is a simple and secure method for parents to keep a closer tab on their children. It allows a customer (e.g., a parent) to view on a map a location of the Chaperone enabled phone of another customer (e.g., a child) and to receive alerts when the Chaperone enabled phone enters or leaves a particular zone.
Similar to Chaperone technology, Axcess Family Finder allows a parent to determine the location of an Axcess Family Finder-capable phone associated with a child. To illustrate, using a personal computer or a mobile phone, the parent may access an Axcess Family Finder Web site to view on a map specific areas that its child has frequently visited (e.g., movie theaters and parks) and to perform on-demand search to locate an Axcess Family Finder-capable phone of the child. Chaperone and Axcess Family Finder were mainly designed to keep tabs on the family members.
Boost Loop, however, expanded the idea of keeping tabs on family members to keeping tabs on friends. In this connection, Boost Loop is another location-based social service that uses a mobile phone built-in GPS to automatically update a customer location for a private list of friends. To illustrate, the customer downloads the Boost Loop software onto its mobile phone and publishes its location on a Boost Loop map. Thereafter, the customer may invite other friends who have installed Boost Loop to join the customer's networks. If friends accept such invitation, their locations will also be published on the map. As such, the customer can identify the locations of its friends in real-time on a map display on the customer's mobile device.
Although the aforementioned technologies allow a requesting device to monitor the current location of the target device, they do not allow the requesting device to seamlessly navigate to the current location of the target device. That is, should the requesting device wish to navigate to the current location of the target device, the requesting device has to copy the current location of the target device, input this static location to a navigator application, and then navigate to this static location. These steps have to be repeated each time the target device changes location.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that takes the concept of periodic location alerts a step further to allow a requesting device to persistently lock onto the target device's dynamic location, thereby allowing the requesting device to not only constantly monitor the dynamic location of the target device but also to adaptively navigate in real-time to the dynamic location associated with the target device. The dynamic location may include a current location of the target device or the final destination for travel of the target device.